Science

How Bell Labs Is Reinventing the Future All Over Again

In 1964, a pair of Bell Labs researchers in New Jersey pointed the world’s largest radio telescope to the skies and unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th Century: cosmic background radiation. We talked with the legendary physicist behind that breakthrough to find out more—and with the president of Bell Labs…

Space & Spaceflight Andrew Tarantola

How a Rare Medical Condition Could Help Extend All of Our Lives

A handful of girls seem to defy one of the biggest certainties in life: ageing. Virginia Hughes reports. Richard Walker has been trying to conquer ageing since he was a 26-year-old free-loving hippie. It was the 1960s, an era marked by youth: Vietnam War protests, psychedelic drugs, sexual revolutions. The young Walker relished the culture…

Health Virginia Hughes - Mosaic

Venus By Day and Night in a Single Image

This is Venus as you’ve never seen it before: on the left, the planet during the day captured in visible light, and on the right, the night side, captured using infrared light, both at the same time. The images were captured by the Ultraviolet/Visible/Near-Infrared spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft. The visible light…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

The Cancer Gene That Lurks Inside All of Us

Inside every cell in every human body there’s a very special gene, called BRCA1, that regulates how fast cells can divide—and a simple mutation within it can be all that’s required for us to develop cancer. BRCA1—the short name for ‘breast cancer 1, early onset’—is essentially a tumor suppressor: when it functions correctly, it controls…

Health Jamie Condliffe

That “Drop of Seawater” Photo Was More Than A Bit Misleading

This photo that’s been going around purports to show all the little critters found in a single drop of seawater, magnified 25 times. It’s a beautiful photo, but there’s just one problem: it’s not really a single drop of seawater (though it is probably magnified 25 times). It’s not as if the photographer, David Littschwager,…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Scientists May Have Figured Out How to Turn Light into Matter

Back in 1934, a team of physicists came up with an idea for how one might create matter from light. Put simply, just slam two photons into each other to get an electron and a positron, a.k.a. matter. And now, some 80 years later, a team of physicists have a plan to carry out the…

Physics & Chemistry Adam Clark Estes

Antiques Roadshow Needs To Stop Appraising Ivory

I’ll say it: I love Antiques Roadshow. The look on the faces of folks who find out on national television that their priceless antiques are really worthless hunks of junk is, well, priceless. There’s just one problem: by appraising ivory the PBS show communicates the idea that elephants are worth more dead than alive. To…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Smartphone Cameras Can Be Used as Quantum Random Number Generators

Random numbers fuel our digital lives, but they’re notoriously difficult to generate properly. Now, scientists have shown that smartphone cameras can be used as quantum random number generators—and it could change the face of mobile security. The problem, you see, is that true random numbers can’t be generated by deterministic processes—like software on a computer—because…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Gorgeous Photos Show Bears and Wolves Feasting Together on a Dead Whale

When a dead whale washes ashore, it’s a meaty bounty for whatever carnivores happen to find it. Researchers were surprised to find brown bears and wolves, two predators that don’t usually get along, sharing a whale carcass for more than four months. And they have the photos to prove it. On May 5 2010, a…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Los Angeles’s Celebrity Mountain Lion is Recovering from Rat Poison

Last month we brought you the story of how P-22, the resident mountain lion mascot in LA’s Griffith Park, was treated for a severe case of mange brought about by the ingestion of rat poison. New camera trap photos show he’s recovering well. https://gizmodo.com/stop-using-rat-poison-its-killing-wildlife-1564538434 Miguel Ordeñana, a Natural History Museum and Griffith Park Connectivity Study…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Go Back In Time With 1950s Footage of the First Gorilla Born at a Zoo

The Columbus Zoo opens its new Heart of Africa exhibit this week, and to mark the occasion, central Ohio’s Channel 10 reached back into its archives to find this footage of the zoo from 1956 and 1957. It includes some absolutely adorable clips of Colo, the first gorilla to ever be born in a zoo.…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

National Aquarium Ponders Moving Dolphins to a Sanctuary

The National Aquarium in Baltimore has invited a panel of experts to discuss whether its eight captive dolphins should be moved to a beachside sanctuary. Captive cetaceans can not simply be released into the wild; the only real solution is to allow these magnificent animals to live out there days in a “sea pen.” While…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Study of 1.3 Million Kids Reveals Vaccines Aren’t Associated with Autism

A meta-analysis including nearly 1.3 million children posted online last week in the journal Vaccine has demonstrated, once again, that there’s no causal link between vaccines and autism. The paper is an online “uncorrected proof.” That means it has already been through peer review and has been accepted, but there could still be a few…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Coolest Dad Ever Cooks Pancakes That Look Like Cephalopods

It’s seafood for breakfast in the home of Nathan Shields. Octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, and even a few extinct critters have found their way onto his kids’ breakfast plates. It’s an adventure in taxonomy and cookery, all at once! Shields isn’t the only creator of scientific deliciousness. There are some space pancakes, too. The only question…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

The First Full-Length Interstellar Trailer Is Spectacular

We’ve been excited about Christopher Nolan’s new epic, Interstellar, for some time. But the arrival of a brand new trailer, revealing an emotional Matthew McConaughey preparing to save us Earthlings from imminent starvation, is still thrilling. It’s like the Great Depression meets 2001: A Space Odyssey—in a good way. https://gizmodo.com/interstellar-trailer-a-brief-history-of-flying-1483329080

Space & Spaceflight Adam Clark Estes

Behold The Most Charmingly Inaccurate Infographic on Sloths

Not a single thing on this graphic is true, but that actually makes it somehow more charming and awesome. Cory Loftis is a Visual Development Artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios, but in his free time he draws other things and posts them on his most excellent tumblr. There are plenty more delightful drawings to…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Peer Through the Window of a Soyuz Capsule Just Returned to Earth

This isn’t a steampunk porthole or part of a move set: you’re looking through the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule that touched down on Earth on Wednesday May 14th. The capsule carried Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

A Massive Dose of Measles Virus Wiped Out This Woman’s Cancer

Stacy Erholtz didn’t have many options to treat her blood cancer left when she agreed to being injected with the equivalent of 10 million doses of measles vaccine. Hours later, she was vomiting and feverish. Months later, her cancer was gone. This landmark result—if replicated in larger clinical trials—could open the door to new therapy…

Health Sarah Zhang

Scientists Finally Understand Shark Skin, Thanks to 3D Printers

If you described a shark as a toothy torpedo covered in sandpaper, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark. It’s that rough sandpapery skin that gives sharks their highly efficient swimming abilities, and scientists finally understand why. A shark’s skin is covered in millions of microscopic denticles, rigid tooth-like scales that jut out from…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

Scientists Discover How Octopuses Avoid Tying Themselves In Knots

There are many things that make the octopus a strange creature, but one of them is that each of its eight arms has an essentially infinite number of positions, and yet each arm operates independently. How does an octopus keep from tying itself in knots? A group of Israeli and American researchers think they’ve discovered…

Biology Jason G. Goldman

How Bell Labs Is Reinventing the Future All Over Again

How a Rare Medical Condition Could Help Extend All of Our Lives

Venus By Day and Night in a Single Image

The Cancer Gene That Lurks Inside All of Us

That “Drop of Seawater” Photo Was More Than A Bit Misleading

Scientists May Have Figured Out How to Turn Light into Matter

Antiques Roadshow Needs To Stop Appraising Ivory

Smartphone Cameras Can Be Used as Quantum Random Number Generators

Gorgeous Photos Show Bears and Wolves Feasting Together on a Dead Whale

Los Angeles’s Celebrity Mountain Lion is Recovering from Rat Poison

Go Back In Time With 1950s Footage of the First Gorilla Born at a Zoo

National Aquarium Ponders Moving Dolphins to a Sanctuary

Study of 1.3 Million Kids Reveals Vaccines Aren’t Associated with Autism

Coolest Dad Ever Cooks Pancakes That Look Like Cephalopods

The First Full-Length Interstellar Trailer Is Spectacular

Behold The Most Charmingly Inaccurate Infographic on Sloths

Peer Through the Window of a Soyuz Capsule Just Returned to Earth

A Massive Dose of Measles Virus Wiped Out This Woman’s Cancer

Scientists Finally Understand Shark Skin, Thanks to 3D Printers

Scientists Discover How Octopuses Avoid Tying Themselves In Knots

White House’s Mysterious ‘Covfefe Moment’ Was Stupider Than We Imagined

Gym Bros Are Pushing Mystery Muscle Drugs Doctors Barely Recognize, Study Warns

The Head of HBO Explains What it Takes to Get a ‘Game of Thrones’ Spinoff Going

Elon Musk’s Lawyer Claims Jury’s 420 ‘Joke’ Proves He Didn’t Receive a Fair Trial

‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ Is a Genre Blending Delight

Leaked Anthropic Model Presents ‘Unprecedented Cybersecurity Risks,’ Much to Pentagon’s Pleasure

Don’t miss out: Bitdefender, One of the World’s Best Antiviruses, Is Now on Sale

The Secret to Better Sperm? It’s Probably Already on Your Schedule

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

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